Porto Travel Guide

A travel guide for visiting Porto Portugal including the 8 best things to do in Porto. Highlights include: Porto's Wine Lodges including Sandemann and Offley, Telerifico de Gaia, Porto's famous sandwich, Sao Bento Train Station, Clergios Church Tower, Lello Bookstore, Riverfront Ribeira quarter, and the Stock Exchange Palace. Porto is Portugal's 2nd largest city and is famous for Port Wine. Porto is built along the hills overlooking the Douro river estuary, and its historical center was awarded World Heritage status by UNESCO in 1996. Porto is not as well known as Portugal's capital Lisbon, but Porto is becoming a tourist destination of it's own. In fact, Porto was named by Forbes Magazine as "The City To Visit This Year" in 2017. Don't forget the traditional sandwich called "Francesinha", which literally translated means little French lady. Porto is just about the only place in the world where you can find it. Essentially the Francesinha is toast with layers of meat inside (beef, pork meat, ham...). The sandwich is then covered with cheese and a spicy sauce, with the option of including french fries on top. The "Francesinha" has been considered one of the 10 best sandwiches in the World. One of the most famous lodges in Porto is the Sandeman lodge. This lodge has been here since the middle of the 18th century. It was originally founded by a Scottish man who wanted to import the wines from Portugal to Britain. The tours are 6 Euro, you can turn up and hope they have a tour in your language. We're here in the morning at 11, they said we'd just missed an English tour at 10.30 and the next one's at 2.45. Apparently Sandeman has two sister wine sellers and they'll let you know when those have English tours. So the next English tour for us is at Offley at 12 o'clock and there is another one, the Ferreira just a little further down the street. So if you don't find a tour at the one you're going to, check out one of the other lodges. For a unique view of the wine lodges and the river front of Porto take the Teleferico de Gaia. The views are truly terrific on the Teleferico. Ba - dum - tish! It takes you from wine lodge country up to the top of the bridge near the Metro Station. Tickets one way cost 5 Euro or 8 Euro for a round trip. Porto's main street through the historic center is a big wide avenue that has the City Hall on top flanked by two roads on either side, reminiscent of Wenceslas Square in Prague. Even if you're not taking a train into or out of Porto it's worth a trip to the Sao Bento Train Station. It's a very beautiful train station, actually I think one of the most beautiful on the inside that I've been to, the lobby area at least, because it was decorated with these blue Portuguese tiles from 1910 and they're showing the history of transportation from horses to oxen to boats and even battles over there. You'll find a number of historic churches dotted around the town with decorative Portuguese blue tiles inside and in this case, outside the church. That blue tile decoration outside occurs on more than just one church. For some of the best views of Porto climb up to the top of the Clerigos church tower. The tower itself isn't actually that tall but it is on the highest point of Porto making it a place for unobstructed views. You know, I say it's not that tall because I haven't climbed it yet. The total number of stairs, 197 to be exact. And actually the stair climb isn't too bad. It's slightly narrow but it takes about 10 minutes to get to the top, maybe even five if you do it quickly. After the tower stop by at the Livraria Lello, a bookstore that was founded in 1881 and it's where people thought J.K. Rowling was inspired to write Harry Potter. It has to be the most elaborately decorated and designed bookstore I've ever seen and the staircase looks like something out of an M.C. Escher drawing. Very curvy. The street right along the river, the Ribeira, or as I like to think of it, the Riviera. I don't think that's really what it's called but I'm going to call it that for this video. It's a great place to dine, there's a lot of restaurants here. To see an interesting kind of "private Palace" in Porto, visit the Palacio da Bolsa, or the Stock Exchange Palace. This palace was completed in 1910 to be the Porto and North of Portugal Stock Exchange, built and owned by the Oporto Commercial Association. CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE: http://bit.ly/yellowwsub You might enjoy watching my other videos from Portugal in this playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVLH8cROe0E&list=PLOVadUHX1B-JhrEbfN7Z55UOB_hpkg8cS Yellow Productions on Social Media: FACEBOOK: https://facebook.com/YellowProductionsTravel INSTAGRAM: https://instagram.com/yellowwproductions/ TWITTER: https://twitter.com/chrisraney GOOGLE+: https://google.com/+yellowwproductions Check out my blog: http://yelloww.net Music: BER_1150_11_Portugal_Backhaus_Dinier_Stingel_267202 (killertracks.com)